Event Type
Polyphonic Swamp Sonics is a performance organized by four University of New Orleans MFA students. We will use the interplay of spoken word and recorded sounds such as water crashing against the lakefront and the sound of cars rushing by on the overpass to mirror the Anthropocene. Through vocal and audio manipulation, we will degrade these sounds into their simplest syllabic noise. Speaking to each other and as one, we will present a multimedia collaborative poem using field recordings from the soundscapes of New Orleans and video clips of locations including the lakefront, Bayou Bienvenue’s cypress “ghost swamp” in the Lower Ninth Ward, the Crescent City Connection bridge near Tchoupitoulas St., and the batture region of the Mississippi River proximal to the uptown neighborhoods. The performance will also feature small sections of call and response with the audience, inviting them to join the poets in an interrogation of sound and environment. By activating multiple senses, audience members will have an embodied experience related to the climate crisis in New Orleans.